Art Basel Jitters

Art Basel organizers say the economic downturn sweeping the world is fairly recent and galleries have had to plan their booths at the fair six months ahead of time, so they don’t expect changes to those plans. But galleries are waiting to see how sales will go. “It’s obviously more of a buyer’s market,” says Marc Spiegler, co-director for the Miami Beach fair and the annual Art Basel held in Switzerland. “I have been talking to a lot of collectors. They feel its a better time to buy art.”

Unfortunately, the story repeats some commonplaces about the art market being based on hedge fund buyers. But it does close with this observation by Craig Robins:

Robins is a developer who has assisted in creating Design Miami, which is a design fair that coincides with both the Art Basel fairs in Switzerland and Miami Beach. He says great art will always have value. “We’ll weed out the less sincere people, the less sincere collectors, and we’ll also probably weed out some of the less sincere artists,” Robins says. “It’s going to be a very hard time in the sense that people are going to suffer, but at the end its going to make us stronger, more judicious, more intensely focused on quality and we’ll probably have a better market because of it.”